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A volunteer tour guide at the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima has made two intricate models to help visitors understand the impact the atomic bomb had on the site.

Okihiro Terao had lived in a house just 300 metres from the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, which was the only structure to survive the blast, but his family moved away before the bomb was dropped, reports The Japan Times.

His interest in the topic has remained, however, and he has been offering guided tours of the remains of the hall to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two this year.

Terao has created two models out of stained glass; the first showing the dome before it was bombed on August 6th 1945 and the other depicting the damage afterwords.

He took up stained glass model making after he retired and soon found that he had a particular talent for it.

It took Terao five months to make a representation of the bombed-out dome, but a much lengthier two years to create a miniature version of it when it was still the promotion hall.

The number of sites recognised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in a country is of great importance to tourism. These places of particular interest attract visitors from all over the world, so it is not surprising that Japan is hoping to increase its number.

At present, the nation has 15 sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List, but is in the process of trying to get accreditation for others. The Council for Cultural Affairs has now highlighted a cluster of five ancient monuments in the Fukuoka Prefecture to focus attention on in an attempt to get them listed by UNESCO.

The process will see the Munakata-Okinoshima monuments presented to UNESCO by February next year, with the aim that they will be listed in 2017. This all depends on the opinions of the World Heritage Committee and whether they believe these sites meet the criteria set out by the organisation.

Tuesday, 21st July 2015In General Japan News, General Japan News, General Japan News, General Japan News,

Solar power plants being created out of Japan's abandoned golf courses

Since the 1980s heyday of golf in Japan, participation in the sport across the country has dropped by 40 per cent, leaving the nation with a rather unique problem. That is what to do with the abandoned golf courses?

Despite the possibility of being levelled with development in mind, the electronics giant Kyocera has come upon a more innovative approach to using these spaces.

The firm is using abandoned golf courses to open vast solar panel arrays to help provide renewable energy to the gadget-obsessed country of Japan.

So far the move has been welcomed by many, with a need to replace nuclear power in the nation being more apparent.

The first of the projects to get underway is located in Kyoto prefecture and will launch in 2017 and see 23 megawatts of power produced, the equivalent energy needed to run 8,000 homes.

A second plant was given permission to go ahead in January 2014, but it will be considerably bigger in size when it is completed in Kagoshima prefecture.